Leading Economists, Historians, Strategists All Warn: 'WW III Is Coming'

Paul Craig Roberts -- former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who's Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, PhD economist -- has written a chilling article about the build-up of hostilities between the US and Russia. It is titled, simply: "War Is Coming."

(August 1, 2014) -- Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who's Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, PhD economist -- wrote an article yesterday about the build-up of hostilities between the US and Russia titled, simply: "War Is Coming." In the article [printed in full at the end of this posting -- EAW], Roberts notes:

As reported by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, the Russian response to the extra-legal ruling of a corrupt court in the Netherlands, which had no jurisdiction over the case on which it ruled, awarding $50 billion dollars from the Russian government to shareholders of Yukos, a corrupt entity that was looting Russia and evading taxes, is telling. Asked what Russia would do about the ruling, an advisor to President Putin replied, "There is a war coming in Europe." Do you really think this ruling matters?"

In January, well-known economist Nouriel Roubini tweeted from the gathering of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos:Many speakers compare 2014 to 1914 when WWI broke out & no one expected it. A black swan in the form of a war between China & Japan?

And:Both [Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe and an influential Chinese analyst don't rule out a military confrontation between China and Japan. Memories of 1914?

Billionaire hedge fund manager Kyle Bass writes:Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn.

Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.

Reagan's head of the Office of Management and Budget -- David Stockman -- is posting pieces warning of the dispute between the US and Russia leading to World War 3.

Investment adviser Larry Edelson wrote an email to subscribers entitled "What the "Cycles of War" are saying for 2013″, which states:Since the 1980s, I've been studying the so-called "cycles of war" -- the natural rhythms that predispose societies to descend into chaos, into hatred, into civil and even international war.

I'm certainly not the first person to examine these very distinctive patterns in history. There have been many before me, notably, Raymond Wheeler, who published the most authoritative chronicle of war ever, covering a period of 2,600 years of data.

However, there are very few people who are willing to even discuss the issue right now. And based on what I'm seeing, the implications could be absolutely huge ....

Former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner -- who has made some big accurate calls, and counts major hedge funds, banks, brokerage houses, and high-net-worth individuals as clients -- says there will be "a major war", which will drive the Dow to 5,000.

Veteran investor adviser James Dines forecast a war as epochal as World Wars I and II, starting in the Middle East.

Martin Armstrong -- who has managed multi-billion dollar sovereign investment funds -- wrote in August:"Our greatest problem is the bureaucracy wants a war. This will distract everyone from the NSA and justify what they have been doing. They need a distraction for the economic decline that is coming.

Armstrong wrote a piece yesterday entitled, "Why We will Go to War with Russia", and another one today saying, "Prepare for World War III".

Bad Economic Theories
What's causing the slide towards war? We discuss several causes below. Initially, believe it or not, one cause is that many influential economists and talking heads hold the discredited belief that war is good for the economy. Therefore, many are overtly or more subtly pushing for war.

Moreover, historians say that declining empires tend to attack their rising rivals ... so the risk of world war is rising because the US feels threatened by the rising empire of China.

The US government considers economic rivalry to be a basis for war. Therefore, the US is systematically using the military to contain China's growing economic influence.

Competition for Resources Is Heating Up
In addition, it is well-established that competition for scarce resources often leads to war. For example, Oxford University's Quarterly Journal of Economics notes:In his classic, A Study of War, Wright (1942) devotes a chapter to the relationship between war and resources. Another classic reference, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels by Richardson (1960),extensively discusses economic causes of war, including the control of "sources of essential commodities."

A large literature pioneered by Homer-Dixon (1991, 1999) argues that scarcity of various environmental resources is a major cause of conflict and resource wars (see Toset, Gleditsch, and Hegre 2000, for empirical evidence).

***
In the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), Chile fought against a defensive alliance of Bolivia and Peru for the control of guano mineral deposits. The war was precipitated by the rise in the value of the deposits due to their extensive use in agriculture.

***
Westing (1986) argues that many of the wars in the twentieth century had an important resource dimension. As examples, he cites the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), the Six Day War (1967), and the Chaco War (1932-1935). More recently, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a result of the dispute over the Rumaila oil field.

In Resource Wars (2001), Klare argues that following the end of the Cold War, control of valuable natural resources has become increasingly important, and these resources will become a primary motivation for wars in the future.

And James Quinn and Charles Hugh Smith say we're running out of all sorts of resources . . . which will lead to war.

Central Banking and Currency Wars
We're in the middle of a global currency war -- i.e. a situation where nations all compete to devalue their currencies the most in order to boost exports. Brazilian president Rousseff said in 2010:The last time there was a series of competitive devaluations . . . it ended in world war two.

Jim Rickards agrees:Currency wars lead to trade wars, which often lead to hot wars.
(In 2009, Rickards participated in the Pentagon's first-ever "financial" war games. While expressing confidence in America's ability to defeat any other nation-state in battle, Rickards says the US could get dragged into "asymmetric warfare," if currency wars lead to rising inflation and global economic uncertainty.)

As does billionaire investor Jim Rogers:Trade wars always lead to wars.

Given that China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa have just joined together to create a $100 billion bank based in China, and that more and more trades are being settled in Yuan or Rubles -- instead of dollars -- the currency war is hotting up.

Multi-billionaire investor Hugo Salinas Price says:What happened to [Libya's] Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn't want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar.

Indeed, senior CNBC editor John Carney noted:Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.

Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal thinks the central banking initiative reveals that foreign powers may have a strong influence over the rebels:

This suggests we have a bit more than a ragtag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. "I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising," Wenzel writes.

Indeed, some say that recent wars have really been about bringing all countries into the fold of Western central banking.

Finally, trend forecaster Gerald Celente -- who has been making some accurate financial and geopolitical predictions for decades -- says WW3 will start soon.

Debt
Martin Armstrong argued that war plans against Syria are really about debt and spending:The Syrian mess seems to have people lining up on Capital Hill when sources there say the phone calls coming in are overwhelmingly against any action. The politicians are ignoring the people entirely. This suggests there is indeed a secret agenda to achieve a goal outside the discussion box. That is most like the debt problem and a war is necessary to relief the pressure to curtail spending.

The same logic applies to Ukraine and other countries. Billionaire investor Jim Rogers notes:A continuation of bailouts in Europe could ultimately spark another world war. . . . Add debt, the situation gets worse, and eventually it just collapses. Then everybody is looking for scapegoats. Politicians blame foreigners, and we're in World War II or World War whatever."

Americans Don't Want War
Poll after poll shows that the American people don't want to get involved in any more wars. After all, we spent trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Americans are exhausted. Not only does a top Pentagon official say we're no safer -- and perhaps less safe -- after 13 years of war, but it has now been shown that war hurts our economy.

Never-ending wars are also destroying our democratic republic. The Founding Fathers warned against standing armies, saying that they destroy freedom. They were right ...

And they warned against financing wars with debt. But according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the US debt for the Iraq war could be as high as $5 trillion dollars (or $6 trillion dollars according to a study by Brown University.)

The US has the largest standing army in history, and treats anti-war sentiment as terrorism. But war is great for the bankers and the defense contractors. And -- as discussed above -- governments are desperate for war.

(July 28, 2014) -- The extraordinary propaganda being conducted against Russia by the US and UK governments and Ministries of Propaganda, a.k.a., the "Western media," have the purpose of driving the world to war that no one can win. European governments need to rouse themselves from insouciance, because Europe will be the first to be vaporized due to the US missile bases that Europe hosts to guarantee its "security."

As reported by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, the Russian response to the extra-legal ruling of a corrupt court in the Netherlands, which had no jurisdiction over the case on which it ruled, awarding $50 billion dollars from the Russian government to shareholders of Yukos, a corrupt entity that was looting Russia and evading taxes, is telling. Asked what Russia would do about the ruling, an advisor to President Putin replied, "There is a war coming in Europe." Do you really think this ruling matters?"

The West has ganged up on Russia, because the West is totally corrupt. The wealth of the elites is based not only on looting weaker countries whose leaders can be purchased (read John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for instruction on how the looting works), but also on looting their own citizens. The American elites excel at looting their fellow citizens and have wiped out most of the US middle class in the new 21st century.

In contrast, Russia has emerged from tyranny and from a government based on lies, while the US and UK submerge into tyranny shielded by lies. Western elites desire to loot Russia, a juicy prize, and there stands Putin in the way. The solution is to get rid of him like they got rid of President Yanukovich in Ukraine.

The looting elites and the neoconservative hegemonists have the same goal: make Russia a vassal state. This goal unites the Western financial imperialists with the political imperialists.

I have recorded for readers the propaganda that is used in order to demonize Putin and Russia. But even I was stunned by the astounding and vicious lies in the UK publication The Economist on July 26. The cover is Putin's face in a spider web, and, you guessed it, the cover story is "A Web of Lies."

You need to read this propaganda both in order to see the gutter level of propaganda in the West and the obvious drive to war with Russia. There is no evidence whatsoever in the story to support The Economist's wild accusations and demand for the end of Western "appeasement" of Russia and the harshest possible action against Putin.

The kind of reckless lies and transparent propaganda that comprises The Economist's story has no other purpose than to drive the world to war.

The Western elites and governments are not merely totally corrupt, they are insane. As I have previously written, don't expect to live much longer. In this video, one of Putin's advisors and Russian journalists speak openly of US plans for a first strike on Russia:

(June 5, 2014) -- Some are saying that Israel must hit Iran by Aug 21st. While no one knows when precisely WW III will begin, that it will begin soon is almost certain. The Elite are playing a mere game. We are only pawns in their game. They have an excess in humans, and a need for a boost in their economy…. They will use this pre-planned crisis to attack Iran and possibly from there a World War.

Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.